A Disease Domain Kingpin Is Selling Ebola.com for $150,000
Currently, Ebola.com is pretty barebones: an image of the virus, a few news articles, and links to buy relevant books on Amazon. If you think you can do something better with the site, it can be yours for just $150,000. But if birdflu.com better suits your fancy, you'll have to pay Jon Schultz a little more.
The Washington Post interviewed Schultz, a kind of disaster domain dealer, who, in addition to the addresses above, also owns terror.com, fukushima.com, potassiumiodide.com, and H1N1.com. All of them are for sale:
Schultz, of Las Vegas-based Blue String Ventures, looks at domains through the lens of a gambler. It's not what a domain is worth today, he advised in an interview with the Washington Post. It's what it is worth tomorrow. "Our domain, birdflu.com, is worth way more than Ebola.com. We're definitely holding onto that one for the event," he said, referring to an outbreak he contends could be way bigger than Ebola, turning the owner of birdflu.com into a very rich man. "That one's airborne and Ebola would never go airborne in the United States like bird flu can."
When Schultz bought the Ebola domain for $13,500, in 2008, the disease wasn't quite screaming to be monetized the way it is now. The graph below, via Google, shows search interest in the years since then:
If there were ever a time to Schultz to cash in on his plot, the time is now: he admitted to the Post that if a cure comes along to "ameliorate" the outbreak before he gets a chance to sell, it might render his property worthless. Keep him in your prayers.
[Screenshot via Ebola.com]